


Porcelain

by EmmyJay



Series: Ivory Ascending [5]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: (a lot of things get mentioned that don't actually happen), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, Drugging, F/M, Grooming, Hair Combing As Foreplay, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Touching, Pregnancy (mentioned), Scratching, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, pegging (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-01-30 20:34:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21434299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyJay/pseuds/EmmyJay
Summary: Seladon's second summons, and all that it entails.
Relationships: Seladon/skekSo (Dark Crystal)
Series: Ivory Ascending [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1528451
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I turned 30 today, so of course I'm posting more of this garbage.

It was just over a week since Seladon's meeting, and mere days after her encounter with a strangely familiar creature, that the Chamberlain remarked how the scratches on her body had almost entirely faded. Even the gouges on her thighs were better—still an angry red, perhaps, but the wounds themselves had closed, and scabs flaked off. He had proclaimed that she was healed, indulging himself in praise for his own efforts, and taken extra care in the grooming that followed.

It may have been coincidence that the Emperor's next summons came the day following. But Seladon knew better.

\---

This time when Seladon knocked on the door of the Emperor's quarters, it was a small team of Podlings who greeted her. They chattered anxiously amongst themselves as they pulled her inside, words strange but tones recogniseably distressed. The guided her across the now-familiar antechamber and through a door on the far side of the room, one of several she had not noticed last time. _'Perhaps not so familiar, then.'_ There was no one inside the room beyond, but they ushered her in all the same, closing the door behind her with a _click_.

The room in which Seladon found herself was, like the antechamber, nondescript: a fireplace against one wall, a dressing table and armoire against another, and in the far corner beneath a small window a bed larger than she had ever seen, though still lacking the opulence of the rest of the castle.

_'The Emperor's private bedchamber?'_

Aside from those few pieces of furniture the room was empty, without decoration or adornment on its stone walls. Seladon turned her gaze toward the ceiling, similarly plain, and her eyes caught on the cracks and lines there, following their patterns with a creeping familiarity—like what she'd felt when face-to-face with the eye in her room, except colder, like talons sinking into her flesh.

_'I've been here before.'_

The realisation should have obvious, but it still shook Seladon to her core. Of course she had been here: this was where the Emperor had taken her last time, when her mind was too addled with Essence to know her surroundings. But all too vividly she now recalled him upon her, her healed scratches singing in sympathy, the echo of Maudra Fara's screaming bounding about her skull—

_"That's a good Gelfling."_

Panic now truly began to set in, clawing her like talons through fog. Would he make her drink again? Seladon's eyes flew about the chamber, and quickly landed with growing dread on a small collection of vials atop the dressing table.

_'Please, no.'_

The wild thought occurred to her to grab them, smash them all against the wall, or the floor; to throw them out the window, throw **herself** out the window, anything to spare her the inevitable, what was drawing near.

The distant sound of a door opening came from the antechamber beyond. Seladon looked to the still-closed bedchamber door, her only remaining protection; back to the vials, glimmering softly in the firelight like an arrangement of Unamoth chrysalides across the ceiling of Mayrin’s personal quarters, harboring a creature aching to fly.

The door to the bedchamber swung open, and she spun to face the figure who swept inside, his hungry eyes finding her without hesitation.

"All-Maudra."

She lowered herself, the same display of a curtsy as before, and tried to control her shaking. "My Lord Emperor."

She did not look up at his approach, but it thankfully seemed he did not expect her to. One of his hands fell upon the small of her back, barely a touch but enough that Seladon had to force herself not to recoil. A light push guided her to the dressing table (the vials glinting, _please, no_—) and then another hand on her shoulder urged her to sit. The bench there was just slightly too tall for her to slide easily onto, and the awkward scramble she was forced to do instead made her cheeks burn with humiliation.

_'I am the All-Maudra. I am the leader of the Gelfling.'_

The dressing table had no mirror, nowhere to see oneself while preparing for the day. Without it, Seladon could only fix her gaze at the wall behind, fighting not to let her eyes stray to the silver-filled vials sitting just beyond her peripheral. The Emperor stood behind her, not quite touching, but near enough that the edge of his robes brushed against her wings, and she tucked them instinctively closer to escape the contact.

"How long has it been since you came to us, All-Maudra?"

Seladon swallowed, thankful for the lack of mirror if only because it spared her the sight of him looming over her. "Just over an unum, My Lord."

The Emperor made a noise of affirmation, thoughtful. His hands brushed her back; then, before she even thought to flinch, he gathered the whole breadth of her silver hair between them, twisting it lightly into a single mass.

"An unum," he repeated, and try though she might Seladon could not read his tone. "And in all that time, you have not had access to any of your Gelfling..._grooming_ tools."

It was not a question, but Seladon shook her head nonetheless, as much as she could with her hair in his grasp. While she had been provided with water for washing, she had not been given anything like a brush or comb since her arrival to the castle. She had her own fingers, and the Chamberlain's talons, and more recently his perfumed oils—all of which she was admittedly thankful for, certain her hair would by now be an unsalvageable mess without them. But nothing else had been gifted to her, and she had not dared test the limits of her Lords' hospitality by asking—who knew how the Chamberlain might have twisted such a request, into an unreasonable demand or another favour she now owed him for, neither option ideal.

The Emperor made a thoughtful noise, letting the long strands fall from his grip, and Seladon sagged in relief. It was short-lived, however, as he leaned over her to begin rifling in one of the drawers, the reach now pressing him tightly against her back.

"The Collector found a variety of such tools in the guards' former barracks," he continued as he searched, paying no heed to how Seladon had gone rigid against him, her wings twitching anxiously against the constraint. "Of no use to us, of course—trine past I would have had her dispose of them with the other refuse. Ah..."

The Emperor drew back at last, having found what he was looking for, while Seladon kept her eyes fixed forward, waiting. He gathered her hair in one hand once more, holding it in a tight fist between her shoulders; with the other he sunk something into the hair near her scalp, rows of teeth cutting into the tangles there and dragging them roughly downward.

_'...what?'_

Had there been a mirror before her, Seladon was certain she would have seen her own mouth hanging open in shock, while behind her the Emperor worked the comb—because that was what it was, a comb, taken from the belongings of a castle guard (where were the guards, where had they all gone)—down to her nape, pushing forcefully when the tangles became too thick to progress further. He growled in irritation, wrenching the comb free and repeating his previous efforts—only to meet resistance once again, in the same spot as before.

The scene was so bizarre, so surreal, that Seladon wondered if she was dreaming. Of all the things she had imagined happening tonight, the Emperor seating her at his dressing table and combing her hair was never one of them. She recalled the Chamberlain offering to ask for gentleness on her behalf; was this turn of events his doing? Or was it simply another game, like the one with the map and the talons around her throat?

_'What does it matter?'_ she wondered dazedly to herself. _'Either way I am still a pet, sitting obediently for my Masters.'_

Again and again the Emperor repeated the same cycle: forcing the comb near the top of her scalp and ripping downward. With each failure he grew more and more violent, as Seladon sat in increasing discomfort—reminded, strangely, of her own efforts as a childling, attempting to batter Brea's hair into submission while her sister (darling, clever Brea) wailed in dramatic fashion. A particularly hard **wrench** snapped her head back, and Seladon's hands flew to his on instinct, scrambling at some attempt to keep him from scalping her.

"My Lord, you—"

Her mouth snapped shut before she could say any more, sense finally catching up with her, but the Emperor had already paused in his ministrations—waiting. She hesitated, wondering if she should continue, if it was truly worth the risk of angering him with her interruption.

"...if you start at the bottom," she said at last, words careful, "and work your way up, it...it goes much easier."

The Emperor did not comment on her advice, and she could not see his face to discern his reaction. Yet when he resumed his task, he directed his focus to the tattered ends of her hair rather than the top, attentions notably less violent than before.

How long the process went on for, Seladon could not have said; she could not see the window from her position, though the gradual darkening around them suggested that the Third Brother had fully set by the time the Emperor finished. He set the comb on the dresser with a _click_, and when she looked Seladon saw that it was yellowed white, likely made of bone, and tapered to a point at one end. He nosed his beak into her newly-tidied hair and inhaled, and she imagined snatching the comb up and plunging it into his eyes until he could never look at her again.

His arms encompassed her, lifting her smaller body up and away, toward the far end of the room, toward his bed. The comb remained where it lay, unblooded.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Emperor has Seladon in his bedchamber and at his mercy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **BIG NONCON WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER.** Not as graphic as it could have been, but moreso than what's been in the story previously. PLEASE read with caution.
> 
> This chapter is another that will eventually get a oneshot of skekSo's perspective, although it won't come for quite some time. I'm trying to get as much of the main story written as I can before I start tossing in extras.

She drank from the vial without a fight this time, and the Emperor murmured words of pleasure for it. This Essence had been diluted, he explained, at the Scientist's suggestion, to make its effects less intense for her, keep her more within her own head. Seladon could hardly fathom why he would make such an effort, until it occurred to her that she was the subject of an experiment—his or the Scientist's, it didn't matter whose.

True enough, the effects were not so overwhelming as they had been in their previous encounter. The thousand voices swirled in her mind, but their chorus was not as cacophonous as before—she could even reach past it, picking individual strands from the mass, ribbons of memories snatched away. Through one set of eyes she donned her guards' armor in the morning light, grumbling over complicated buckles; through another he cast his sword into the furnace, that he might never have need of it again. A dark figure filled her vision, cruel and crystalline and glowing a terrible, tortured violet; she looked up, and a Spriton girl hovered above her, eyes green and gold and the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

_"The other guards are all asleep,"_ she whispered against his lips, a note of mischief in her voice; she slipped a talon into his mouth, and he tasted decay on his tongue. "How do you find the taste this time?"

Seladon swallowed, then immediately regretted the action as the taste of the Emperor's flesh slithered further down her throat. "It's cold," she said as best she could around his finger. Her eyes darted past him, back to the dressing table, and saw that the other vials were all emptied. _'Did he drink them all?'_ His talon scraped her tongue as he withdrew; she tasted her own blood in its wake, grateful for how it washed the rest away.

The Emperor turned his attentions to the front of her dress, gathering the fabric into his fists. Seladon felt it pull tight against her; heard the hiss of it, torn. The garment fell to either side, and she closed her eyes against the weight of his gaze drinking her in. _'Is this what Maudra Fara felt, when I drank her?'_

When all the fabric was rent and shed from her body, the hands turned to touching: gathering her breasts between claws, pulling and twisting her nipples until she whimpered. He pushed her to lie back, touch traveling down to her stomach, and she recalled (_stole_) her husband caressing the roundness there as they lay together in the flickering Firebug glow, whispering sweetness to the childling inside, **their** childling—

"Your meals are more sufficient now, I take it?" the Emperor questioned, pulling Seladon to her own mind once again. She looked down the length of her body to her stomach (_flat_) which before had been so sunken—now still terribly thin, but with a renewed softness, her hipbones not protruding quite so much as they had before.

"...yes, My Lord." So, the change in meals had been the Emperor's doing after all. His reasoning for such was lost on her, same as it was when he sat her down and combed her hair. A memory drew to the forefront of Seladon's mind, her own this time, although the words were echoed a hundred times over in other voices: Mayrin's hands steady on her shoulders, voice firm and resolute around the lie.

_"Our Lords know what is best for us,"_ it said. _"It is not our place to question them."_

Above her, the Emperor nodded in approval, digging his thumbs into the divots above her hips. His other fingers wrapped around the bone, stroking her sides; the grip shifted, and Seladon was rolled onto her front, sliding against the silken sheets.

His hands went at once to her wings, causing Seladon's gut to clench in anxiety. The appendages were far hardier than they looked, but the possibility of claws tearing through the membrane consumed her. He pulled the one on the left, stretching it to fullness, seemingly admiring its shape. She thought of tumbling from the sky over the forest during a storm, tree limbs shredding her wings on the way down; saw the sad shake of the doctor's head in the days afterward, heard her own sobbing in the night over her loss, the scars that now replaced a part of her.

The appendage was released, folding tightly back against her body, and the Emperor continued downward, following the ridged trail of her spine. He seemed particularly interested in a spot just below the jugum, lingering and stroking up and down with a knuckle on either side.

It seemed an eternity before he finally reached her backside, pushing her thighs apart and slipping between to the place only she had ever touched. There was some dampness there, as there seemingly always was, but it was not nearly enough, certainly not to dull the sharpness of talons on sensitive flesh. Seladon inhaled, holding her breath; they slipped inside and she curled her hands into fists on either side of her head, willing every muscle in her body to stillness.

"You seem uncomfortable, All-Maudra," the Emperor commented, casual as he explored her. Seladon let out her breath through her nose in short, sharp bursts.

"Forgive me, My Lord," she finally managed. "I am...merely trying not to move. Your talons..."

A pause of consideration; then, "**ah**." His fingers curled experimentally and she gasped, body going impossibly more rigid. "Yes, I suppose that _is_ a concern."

The fingers withdrew, only to return moments later, coated in something cold and slick that made her shiver. They twisted and curled inside her, barely mindful of sharp edges, causing her to wince whenever they scraped. The sound behind her of rustling fabric, the _clink_ of ornamentation shuffled aside, a gentle hum of approval. Something larger than fingers pressed against her, hot and wet at the tip, and Seladon looked to her own hands where they fisted in the sheets, knuckles white with the effort of keeping still. _'I am the All-Maudra. I am the leader of the Gelfling.'_ It took him two tries to enter and she cried out, her mind going white.

Memories flooded her thoughts, spilling over from stolen lives, and she grasped for them in desperation: whispered words of affection that weren't really there, singing pleasure that wasn't real from the invasion inside of her that was. A hand seized her hair in one fist, lifting it up and away. She lay on her back in the grass, her lover's fingers entwined with hers as he took her; he knelt on all fours while his wife growled filthily in his ear, the phallus strapped between her legs striking him in just the spot to make his cock ache. Teeth closed on the back of her neck, pressing her down into the bed with just enough force to stop her sliding back and forth with every thrust, and she writhed, suddenly fearful.

"My Lord," she began, but could not find the breath to finish. Her cries were confused, caught between the bliss of another's memory and the agony of her own present. One of the Emperor's hands gripped her hip, leaving fresh gouges in the skin there; the other forced beneath her, digging into her breast (a softer touch, her lover's hands) squeezing and twisting and clawing at the softness. His tongue caressed her nape, his teeth digging in with every push of his hips: driving himself inside her deeper, and deeper, until she wondered how long it would take for him to pierce her spinning brain.

_'I am the All-Maudra. I am the All-Maudra. I am—'_

A memory of her lover's mouth on her, on the balcony with the strange horn the guards had all been told never to touch. She spasmed, and it must have felt pleasurable because the Emperor groaned low and horrible, the sound moving through his teeth and into her body, vibrating down her bones. Another thrust, harder and deeper than any before; a snarl like a Rakkida pinning a Mounder; a feeling of wet inside of her. And then she was empty, face-down on the bed, gasping and heaving and colder than she could ever remember being.

In the aftermath they lay together, his weight pressing her down, crushing her. Without her dress she could feel every shape of his body, every exhausted heave of his breath—the minute trembles her eyes might have missed, as though his body were collapsing in on itself. Later she would look back and find it odd, that he would be so completely drained by the encounter. In the moment, however, it seemed merely a companion to the wreck Seladon felt inside, and when he finally pulled away, she sagged in relief.

"I have matters to attend to." The Emperor's voice shook when he spoke, the same fatigue she would note in his body reflected there. "You may remain here, if you wish; or else the Podlings will see you back to your own chamber." The _click_ of taloned feet meeting the floor, followed by the shuffling of robes readjusted. A single claw ran the length of her spine almost fondly, and Seladon shuddered, her eyes stinging.

"You have pleased me, All-Maudra," he continued, a queer softness to his tone. "Let us both hope you continue to perform to admirably in the future."

When the door shut behind him, she finally allowed herself to cry.


End file.
